seeks. lisa, that attack on institutions, special counsel jack smith has responded to trump s filings to hold him in contempt of court. how do you expect that power struggle between smith and trump to play out? i don t expect judge chutkan to rule for contempt. i think it was a silly and perhaps even important thing for objects mitt to continue to file a motion in that case while the case is state. that haven t been said, it s certainly not worthy of contempt. and the motion that trump filed, asking judge chutkan to hold him and others and his office in contempt was borderline hysterical and done solely for political purposes, not legal purposes. that motion is not going to be countenanced by that judge. but she was never the audience in the first place, alicia. another headline that caught my eye. nbc reporting that trump won t be able to use the, quote, idiot defense against his january 6th charges. talk me through that.
asking judge chutkan to hold him and others and his office in contempt was borderline hysterical and done solely for political purposes, not legal purposes. that motion is not going to be countenanced by that judge. but she was never the audience in the first place, alicia. another headline that caught my eye. nbc reporting that trump won t be able to use the, quote, idiot defense against his january 6th charges. talk me through that. a number of people, as our colleague ryan riley has noted in his reporting, as defendants on january sixth characters have said i was useful idiot. i was a pawn in don trump s larger game. i did not understand what was going on that day or i felt that i was called by the president to come to washington on january 6th and that he was essentially excusing if not
that s joe s defense. i don t know what s in my house. i don t know what s in my office. china put it there. i don t know what the documents say. it s the idiot defense. it is. you start looking at the stuff about the university of pennsylvania, and it s kind of interesting. so he opens the biden center, at upenn, and then sends the upenn president to be the ambassador of germany. talk abo- if you took the corvette, drove it to taiwan, china wouldn t invade. now, have you ever had a garage door, you hit the button, and it closes, but all of a sudden it goes back up because a leaf is dangling into the beam, and it won t let you close it. that s what we re at.
secure line that the ic can monitor for the administration and the president. that stuff stinks to high heaven, and when people talk about likelihood of various people around donald trump getting indicted, lot of people look at kushner and say this period in transition is the period the dirtiest stuff can happen. does that strike you as plausible? it strikes me as something consistent with the seat of the pants way that stuff is managed. if any of that were to be going on and set up, that should be run by the lawyer and it never was. don mcgahn was excluded from so much, both in the campaign and transition intentionally because there was a basic distrust of lawyers being the ones that say no. idiot defense as far as collusion? i don t believe idiot defense, i believe disorganized defense. i wriete in the book, end of august sunday afternoon i get a call from jared kushner saying how many field ops do we need in pennsylvania. this is the end of august. i said don t we have field o
by russian hacking attempts. don t put it in your ads. don t spend money pushing a claim that was hacked? speaking, before i get to that question, speaking of hacking. still stuns me. last week, week before, the republicans voted down a bill that would have added additional money to protect our voting apparatus. talking about hacking into people s e-mails. actually said, no, no. we re not going to spend money to make sure the process of 2018 and 20 going forward is protected. the same technology. hacking is hacking. if we ever get to the point where people are doubting electio elections, it s over. as far as, kasie, your question, i go back to bringing it back to trump. i believe at the time in the idiot defense. i even believed at the time when trump was getting the information from russians. this is great! you know? i think that there s now obviously a heightened understanding of anybody, any gray areas whatsoever about getting money from i mean,